Doctor Hove coughed to clear her throat before continuing.

‘With no skeletal muscle contractions happening inside the skull, if you reverse gravity by placing someone upside down for long enough, blood will still travel normally from the heart, through the arteries, and into the brain, but it will cease to travel through the veins back to the heart. So what you have is a build-up – blood coming into the brain, but not getting out.’

The doctor paused, the look on her face just a little more somber than a moment ago.

‘With a build-up of blood in the brain, after a while blood will start to leak from the capillaries, accumulating inside the cranium, increasing pressure, and causing the brain to swell. And with that comes a hell of a lot of pain – head, ears, eyes, nose . . . every heart pump would probably feel like thunder was exploding inside her head. All the killer had to do was suspend her by her feet, nothing else. Gravity does the rest. He didn’t even have to be in the room anymore. The pressure would’ve just kept on building up inside her head until it brought her gradual loss of consciousness, and then finally death as the brain would signal either respiration to fail, or the heart to stop pumping blood.’

Uneasily, Hunter shifted his weight from one foot to another.

‘How long?’ Garcia asked. ‘How long before she died? How long could one stand all that pain before the gradual loss of consciousness and death?’

Doctor Hove gave the detective a subtle, unsure headshake. ‘It would depend on several factors, Carlos, like strength and health of the victim. She appears to have been very healthy – good muscle tone, non-smoker, strong lungs, healthy liver and kidneys. But even if I’m wrong, the killer could’ve prolonged the whole process for as long as he wanted simply by returning her to a right-side-up position, decreasing the pressure in her brain, and then starting it all over again an hour or so later.’

‘Do you have an approximate time of death?’ Hunter asked.

‘Supposing that her body was always kept at room temperature after death,’ the doctor explained, ‘and I found no indication to the contrary, I’d say that she’s been dead for about thirty hours, give or take a couple.’

Hunter and Garcia knew that Nicole Wilson had been abducted seven days prior to her body being found, which meant that her killer could indeed have tortured her for five and a half consecutive days.

Before she spoke again, Doctor Hove took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds.

‘But that’s not all,’ she finally said.

Hunter and Garcia both looked at her, surprised.

‘Everything I’ve told you about this victim . . . about how she was tortured, about how she was murdered . . . I’d say none of it is scary in comparison to this.’

‘In comparison to what, Doc?’ Garcia asked.

The doctor turned and retrieved something else from the instrument table behind her – a clear plastic evidence bag containing a white piece of paper.

‘To this.’

‘And what is that?’ Hunter this time.

Doctor Hove looked down at the evidence bag for a couple of seconds before locking eyes with Hunter.

‘This is a note from the killer. He left it lodged inside her throat.’

‘Wait. What?’ Garcia asked, lifting a hand as if he hadn’t heard it properly.

Hunter didn’t move.

‘This piece of paper was first rolled up into a tube,’ the doctor explained, ‘then carefully inserted into the victim’s throat.’ She handed the plastic evidence bag to Hunter. ‘The note speaks for itself.’

The piece of paper inside it was about eight inches long by five wide. Plain white. No lines. Across the center of it, written in blood, were three words.

I AM DEATH.

Fourteen

After leaving the LACDC, it took Hunter and Garcia forty-eight minutes to reach the location where Nicole Wilson’s body had been found – a large, unoccupied green field just a stone’s throw away from Los Angeles International Airport. The field itself was half a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide. Most of it was densely populated by bushy trees like wax myrtles, white ash and California pepper trees, with the exception of two small areas occupied by untreated grass and a few small shrubs and bushes – one on its west side and a much smaller one on its southeast side, where the body had been left. Oddly enough, as if it had decided to run away from the forest-like field, a lonely tree stood in that southeast clearance. Nicole Wilson’s body had been placed just a few feet from it.

Neither detective said much throughout the entire trip. They were both lost in their own thoughts, silently running over everything Doctor Hove had thrown at them and trying their best to make sense of a senseless act.

But even in silence, they both shared one certainty – a killer who was bold enough to write a message in blood and carefully place it in his victim’s throat, knowing full well that it would be found during the post mortem examination, a killer confident enough to call himself DEATH – didn’t do it for fun. He didn’t do it just to tease the police, or to inflate his own ego. He did it for one reason. To let everyone know that this wouldn’t end here.

At the southwest end of the airport, Garcia turned right on to Pershing Drive, and geared down his car.

The area had been cordoned off and a perimeter had already been established by the police. Due to its semi-secluded location there were very few curious onlookers hanging around. The ones that had ventured their luck were being kept too far back to be able to catch a glimpse of anything interesting, and looked bored and ready to give up at any second.

A single reporter was trying his best to obtain any kind of information from the officers by the yellow tape that read: Police Line – Do Not Cross.

Despite decreasing numbers in recent years, murder in LA was still a very common occurrence – on average, one person was murdered every thirty-nine hours in the City of Angels. Though newspapers and TV news stations still covered a number of them, murder just didn’t constitute big news anymore, unless the crime was shrouded by some sort of attention-grabbing factor, like a celebrity being involved, extreme violence or it being attributed to a serial killer.

As Garcia approached the perimeter at the other end from where the reporter was, a uniformed officer signaled for him to turn left and move on, but instead Garcia simply slowed down further. Irritated, the officer shook his head and murmured something to himself before taking a couple of steps toward Garcia’s car.

‘Sir, as you can see the road is closed,’ the officer said in a bored voice, first indicating the police line, then gesturing to his left. ‘You need to go around the—’

Garcia lifted his left hand, interrupting the officer and displaying his credentials.

The officer stopped midsentence and nodded apologetically.

‘Sorry, sir.’

As he handed Garcia the crime-scene logbook so he and Hunter could sign it, a Boeing 777 finished its approach on the west route and touched down on runway 7R, its engine noise so loud and powerful Garcia’s car windows rattled.

‘You can park on the road right over there, sir, by that black and white unit,’ the officer said, collecting the logbook.

Garcia did exactly that.

Two other uniformed officers stood under the shade of a tall and leafy tree next to some more yellow tape that denoted a smaller, internal perimeter. A third officer was sitting inside his Ford Interceptor, apparently text messaging someone. Most activities, including crime scene forensics, had already ceased.